Customs

Customs (archaically known as usages) also known as mores, conventions, and norms, are a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted social rules, standards or criteria established by common practice and socially enforced. These include the observance of traditions, and customary laws recognized by courts.

Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To rev'rence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because deliver'd down from sire to son,
Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing!

Rights of every kind, which stand upon the foot of usage, gradually receive new strength in point of light and evidence from the continuance of that usage; as it implieth the tacit consent and approbation of every successive age, in which the usage hath prevailed. But when the prerogative hath not only this tacit approbation of all ages, the present as well as the former on its side, but is recognised, or evidently presupposed, by many Acts of Parliament, I see no legal objection that can be made to it.

Foster, J., Case of Alexander Broadfoot (1742), Foster's Rep. 179.

Private customs, indeed, are still to be sought from private tradition.

Camden, J., Case of Seizure of Papers (1765), 19 How. St. Tr. 1068.

Proof of the usage of a large capital such as London, is sufficient to show that of the whole world unless it is contradicted.

You say it was in the Saxons' time; you do not come to any time within 600 years; you speak of those times wherein things were obscure.

Lord Bridgman, C.B., Scot's Case (1660), 5 How. St. Tr. 1066.

In many cases a party undertakes to prove a custom from the time of legal memory, the reign of Richard the Second; but that proof is generally established by evidence of acts done at a much later period, and frequently no evidence is given beyond the present century.

There can be very few cases, where a custom has been sufficiently proved, in which a Court could hold that it was unreasonable, for that it must be convenient is shown by the fact that it has been established and followed.

Channell, J., Moult v. Halliday (1897), L. R. 1 Q. B. D. 130.

I cannot draw a distinction as to what length of time will render a practice legal.

Dallas, C.J., Butt v. Conant (1828), Gow's Rep. 95.

I know not how or where to ascertain when an usage becomes of age.

Dallas, C.J., Keyser v. Suse (1828), Gow's Rep. 65.

As usage is a good interpreter of the laws, so non-usage, where there is no example, is a great intendment that the law will not bear it.

Lord Littleton, Section 180, Co. Litt, p. 31.

Time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.

Black's Commentaries, Book 1,. sec 3, p. 15.

If the custom be general, it is the law of the realm: if local only, it is lex loci, the law of the place. Now, all laws are general, as far as the law extends; and all customs of England are of course, immemorial.1 No usage, therefore, can be part of that law, or have the force of a custom, that is not immemorial.

Whatever may be the effect of the prevailing fashions of the times, I do not think that the argument of inconvenience, arising out of those fashions, can at any time be relied upon against a current of decisions.

Lord Eldon, C.J., Beard v. Webb (1800), Bos. & Pull. Rep. 109.

All customs must be supposed to have had a good commencement, unless they appear to be inconsistent or against reason.